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King Philip II of Spain as a symbol of ‘Tyranny’ in Spinoza’s Political Writings Recibido: enero 25 de 2018 | Aceptado: enero 31 de 2018 DOI: 10.17230/co-herencia.15.28.6 Jonathan Israel** [email protected] Abstract The highly abstract style of Spinoza’s philosophy has encouraged some interpretations of him as a thinker with little immediate connection with the whirl of social and cultural affairs around him. This article shows that all three major Western revolts - those of the Netherlands, Portugal and Aragon - against Philip II (his principal symbol and embodiment of tyranny, arbitrary and illicit governance, intolerance and repression of basic liberties) became in some sense internationally entwined and were intensely present in his life, which helps to understand that Spinoza was indeed a revolutionary. Key words: Philip II, tyranny, religious persecution of dissenters, revolution, historical context of Spinoza’s thought. El rey Felipe II de España como símbolo de la tiranía en los escritos políticos de Spinoza Resumen El estilo sumamente abstracto de la filosofía de Spinoza ha alentado algunas interpretaciones en las que se afirma que tenía poco contacto con el ajetreo de los asuntos sociales y culturales a su alrededor. Este artículo muestra que las tres principales revueltas en Occidente (las de Holanda, Portugal y Aragón) contra Felipe II (que para él era el principal símbolo y personificación de la tiranía, del gobierno arbitrario e ilícito, de la intolerancia y de la represión de las libertades básicas) llegaron a estar en algún sentido entrelazadas y estuvieran presentes intensamente en su vida, lo que nos ayuda a entender que Spinoza fue un auténtico revolucionario. * Professor Emeritus, Palabras clave: Insti tute for Advanced Felipe II, tiranía, persecución religiosa de los disidentes, revolución, Study, Princeton, New contexto histórico del pensamiento de Spinoza. Jersey, United States. Revista Co-herencia Vol. 15, No 28 Enero - Junio de 2018, pp. 137-154. (ISSN 1794-5887 / e-ISSN 2539-1208) 137 After sending in an army to conquer Portugal, in the year 1580, Philip II of Spain made himself also ‘king of Portugal’ against the wishes of most of its inhabitants. Acquiring Portugal, observed one of Philip’s advisors, would be a major strategic gain, also “be the principal, most effective, and decisive instrument and remedy for the reduction of the Netherlands to obedience, as well as a useful means of controlling England” (Quoted in Parker, 1998, p. 166). Conquering Portugal was consciously viewed in Madrid as a step to gaining world mastery. Appropriately, Philip’s army of invasion was commanded by the same duke of Alba who was championing a militantly intolerant, forthright Castilian imperialism more generally and had previously subjected the Low Countries to a reign of terror between 1567 and 1573, as part of a brutal and bloody drive to overwhelm the Dutch rebels, resulting in numerous Calvinists, Lutherans and other religious dissidents being brought “to all kinds of martyrdom,” as Spinoza vividly expresses it, in his letter to Albert Burgh (Spinoza, 1995, p. 341). After the battle for Lisbon, the historic liberties and privileges of Portugal, like those of Aragon subsequently, in 1591-1592, were ruthlessly suppressed by the Spanish monarch. One ominous consequence of this 1580 ‘revolution’ in Portugal for the ‘New Christians’, or conversos of Jewish descent, was that the powers of the Inquisition in Portugal, as might have been expected, were further extended. Faced by this crisis and disaster in Portugal, and marked intensification of persecution of all New Christians that followed, neither Portuguese crypto-Jews remaining in Portugal, nor those dispersed to other lands, remained politically inert. Thanks to research in Portuguese Inquisition archives, we know Spinoza’s own family figured among the active ‘judaizers’ in France, at Nantes, as well as in Portugal. “At Nantes, the Portuguese were divided in the late sixteenth century,” as one authority has put it, “between judaisers and Catholics. Among the former was Abraham d’Espinoza, grandfather of Baruch Spinoza, the philosopher.” Actually, Abraham was not Spinoza’s grandfather but his great-uncle, the brother of his grandfather, Isaac d’Espinoza, who later settled in Rotterdam. But what matters is that Abraham certainly figured among the two or King Philip II of Spain as a symbol of ‘Tyranny’ 138 in Spinoza’s Political Writings Jonathan Israel three leading merchants of the ten of so Portuguese New Christian families then residing in Nantes and who, despite living outwardly as a ‘New Christian’, was, like all the Marranos dwelling in France’s western ports at the time, an active ‘judaizer’ - as, presumably, he had been, earlier, in Portugal. That his crypto-Judaism remained steadfast and well-known in crypto-Jewish circles beyond France is beyond doubt because, in 1615, the heads of the Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish marriage dowry society appointed this same great- uncle, Abraham d’Espinoza, principal representative in Nantes of their organization, a certain sign of his being both a leading figure in the Nantes Portuguese community and the most active, committed crypto-judaiser among the Nantes Portuguese New Christian community. Plainly, he was viewed by the Jewish community in Holland with a confidence based on longstanding reputation and experience (Israel, 2002a, pp. 81-82). Spinoza’s paternal grand-father Michael d’Espinoza’s father, in later life used the synagogue name ‘Isaac de Espinoza’. We know died a practicing Jew in Rotterdam, in 1627. Known earlier as Pedro Rodriguez Spinoza, he was born around 1559, in Lisbon, but subsequently dwelt in Vidigueira (Vaz, 1982, pp. 136, 138), an inland southern Portuguese wine town, near Évora, in the Alentejo, the seigneurial rights over which had belonged to the great navigator, Vasco da Gama, and now pertained to the latter’s descendants. This center of a wine-producing area was where Pedro’s wife’s family resided (ibid; Revah, 1995, p. 169; Borges, 2002, p. 125). This lady, Spinoza’s paternal grand-mother, was named Mor Alvares; her own grandfather, Manoel Alvares, had been arrested by the Inquisition in Vidigueira together with several other relatives, in 1570 (Borges, 2002, p. 127). Several of her cousins had been burnt for judaizing in the Évora Auto-da- fe of 1574. A later round of arrests, towards the end of Philip II’s reign, landed more family members, including Spinoza’s maternal great-grandfather, Gabriel Alvares, secretary of an orphanage and a local tax-collector, in prison in 1597, along with two sons and other relatives who were then tortured and stripped of their possessions. Several relatives, including Pedro Rodríguez Espinoza (alias Isaac de Spinoza), fleeing Portugal, in Revista Co-herencia Vol. 15, No 28 Enero - Junio de 2018, pp. 137-154. (ISSN 1794-5887 / e-ISSN 2539-1208) 139 1597, joined family members who had previously managed to settle in Nantes. Michael d’Espinoza, Spinoza’s father was born in Vidigueira around 1587; he left Portugal at around the age of ten when his father departed for France, in 1597 (Revah, 1995, pp. 127-128). The Spinoza family, dwelling ostensibly as New Christians at Nantes, belonged consequently to an international Marrano diaspora, a far- flung network that constituted one of the most dispersed and yet socially cohesive religious and cultural groupings of the early modern Atlantic world. The Nantes Portuguese New Christian community remained extremely small throughout this period apparently never rising above ten or a dozen families. Like the community at Rouen, it remained sharply divided between judaizers and pro-Spanish Catholics until the 1620s but then, the dialectic lapsed. From the 1630s - perhaps owing to the transfer of the Spinoza family to Holland- the Nantes crypto-Jewish element withered away; the remaining Nantes Portuguese opted for a Catholic future (Israel, 2002a, pp. 256-257). The subversion practiced by these Portuguese New Christians living at Nantes was religious, international and also political. During the 1580s and 1590s, many Portuguese exiles lent their support to Dom Antonio, Prior of Crato (Koen, 1967, pp. 111-112). Proclaimed ‘king of Portugal,’ in Lisbon, on 23 June 1580, before Alba’s army arrived, amid great popular fervour aroused by general fear of Castilian domination, Dom Antonio’s regime in Portugal had lasted, just a few weeks. After Alba’s victory, all of Portugal and its colonies had submitted to Philip and Spanish dominance except for the Azores where the local governor held out for the pretender, Dom Antonio (Gómez-Centurión, 1988, p. 181). Dom Antonio himself was by no means inclined to abandon the struggle: he managed to escape, reach France, and eventually organize a sizeable force of 58 vessels and some 6,000 men, mostly French; fitted out in and supplied from Nantes with the help of Portuguese (judaizing) merchants there. He sailed with this fleet in the summer of 1582 to the Azores then still defying Philip II in his name (Martin & Parker, 1988, p. 94; Parker, 1998, p. 167). In the Azores, he was enthusiastically King Philip II of Spain as a symbol of ‘Tyranny’ 140 in Spinoza’s Political Writings Jonathan Israel acknowledged and actually reigned as ‘king of Portugal’ in Terceira, from July to November 1582. However, his fleet, supplied from Nantes, was beaten by a Spanish armada, sent from Cadiz, in a battle off the island of São Miguel, in late July 1582. Terceira was then conquered by Spanish troops, in the summer of 1583. But Dom Antonio, chief focus of Portuguese revolutionary subversion throughout the Atlantic world, eluded Philip’s clutches yet again, escaping once more to France with a few supporters. The Portuguese diaspora’s support for Dom Antonio’s cause developed into what was, at the time, a well-known international panorama of political subversion obvious to everyone, not least Philip himself, and frequently noted by his diplomats.
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